One month

Today marks one month
One month, I am realizing, is a conflicting time. I am still in shock, and I know this. I am still believing maybe she'll come back, that I'll wake up this morning and it will all have been a dream. I know that won't happen... but a part of me hopes.
I hate month one. I believe I will hate every month, but this first month has been exhausting. It's been filled with getting her ashes, creating a little space for her on my bookshelf (Can you believe everything I have of her fits on one shelf?)
I am longing for the day when I won't feel quite so numb, when I will actually feel something recognisable instead of this vague, grey fog.

This morning was like every other morning- except that it wasn't. I knew in my mind that I had lost Mia a month ago today, that today should be a big day for me, but in all honesty it wasn't.
I took my younger sister to get her braces on. I went grocery shopping, and went to my class. I filled out papers and cooked dinner.
I dressed in all black today. Maybe I did it on purpose, or maybe it just happened. All that black didn't seem to be enough. Inside, I wanted to scream. I wanted to tell the receptionist at the orthodontist's office and the clerk at the grocery store, "It's been a month!" As if they would know what that meant.
While my sister was getting her braces on, I went to the nearest Walmart. I wandered the aisles, filling my cart with things I needed and things I didn't. Bananas, Cereal, Noodles, Milk. And then it caught my eye, that little box on the shelf.
In a split second, I decided to make a change, to lose my blond hair and trade it in for something different. This would be a transforming moment, I told myself. This would mean getting rid of the hair that had witnessed my little girl's life, and death. In doing this, maybe I subconsciously hoped I could lose the grief as well.
I came home and I longed to feel something besides this scratching beneath my skin.
I realized I can barely remember what it was like to hold her in my arms. I don't feel like that girl anymore - like her mother. I can't remember what it was like to be that girl. I don't know who I am.
This evening I dyed my hair. Where there once was blond there now is auburn. When I look in the mirror, it still surprises me.
About a week after losing Mia, I was planning on lighting a candle for her tonight, writing a letter, doing all that after grief crap. I couldn't do it. I wanted to, I wanted to do this for her, but I can't. I can't write her a letter and light a candle when all I want to do is close my eyes and go back to a time when she was alive.

One month in, and I expected it to be different. I expected to cry, when in truth, I have only cried a few times since her death. I don't feel like her mother. I can't remember what she felt like. I hate it that I can't remember. I want to feel something other then this scratching under the surface of my skin, the howling of my heart. Like a wolf howling in the moonlight, I am howling for something I have lost. But she's not coming back.
Who am I now?